Why It's Hard to Trust the Michelin Standards

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For many years, the Michelin Guide, bankrolled by the French tire company, was as irrefutable as a papal edict, and often just as mysterious. For over a century, its publishers refused to even consider a volume on the U.S., contending as recently as ten years ago that it would be impossible to judge so many cuisines and so many kinds of restaurants on so vast a territory.

Then, in 2005, the Michelin Man — represented by the fat, white tire-man character Bibendum — ate around New York City, then San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, but stopped publishing the last two after just a couple years for lack of book sales, though the official reason given was that people in L.A. and Vegas really don't know or care about food.

Now comes the 2013 guide to New York, and while very few stars have been added or subtracted since the first edition, with no new top-ranking three-star ("worth a journey") winners, there are enough changes to make one wonder if Michelin's quality standards and, therefore, reliability have dissipated like a fallen soufflé.

For one thing, they've changed many of their own rules: Previously, a restaurant had to be open for a while and visited several times before receiving even a single star ("very good cuisine in its category"), then it took years before a second ("worth a detour") or third star was awarded, after countless re-visits by anonymous inspectors who never knew of each other's existence in a region.

Yet this year, brand-new restaurants have garnered their first stars. One, Atera — the most avant-garde restaurant in New York City at the moment, opened only seven months ago, with just twenty seats — got two right out of the chute. Blanca, a next-door offshoot of Brooklyn's Roberta's, opened just this summer, and only took reservations more or less when the owners felt like it. Yet somehow Michelin was able to get there multiple times and still meet a brutal book publishing, editing, printing, and binding October deadline. They also award three stars to Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, where everyone knows it's literally impossible to book a reservation even months in advance. (In their Spain guide, Michelin always gave three stars to El Bulli, now closed, whose 50 seats per night had to be booked a year in advance, yet somehow Bibendum purported to go as often as necessary to render a judgment.)

Michelin's mysterious way of so easily getting multiple reservations — they always book anonymously — when no one else can is baffling, especially since Michelin has always prided itself on taking its own sweet time to judge a restaurant. (They flubbed it badly once, when they published a rating for a restaurant in Belgium that had not even opened yet.)

And this year they added nearly 100 new restaurants in New York City — with what I was told last year were only five inspectors in the area, one in each borough. Indeed, the real value of the guide is its generous listings of Bib Gourmand "inspectors' favorites for good value" and its very useful "under $25" category. Yet one might well ask, why would a delightful storefront Italian restaurant like Torrisi Italian Specialties or the ramshackle Roberta's get one star, when very similar, very casual eateries get put into Bib Gourmand?

Michelin has always insisted they judge only, only, only by what's on the plate, blind to all accoutrements, $10 million décor, professional service, thick winelists, trained sommeliers, even cordiality. Of course, when you see that ultra-posh French restaurants like Daniel, Eleven Madison Park, Jean Georges, Le Bernardin, and Per Se get three stars, and the only other two three-star restaurants are Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare ($225 plus drinks, tax, and tip) and the Japanese sushi bar Masa ($400 plus drinks, tax, and tip), one wonders just how blind to ambience the inspectors are. (I might point out that in London, three of the four three-star restaurants are haute-cuisine French.)

Bibendum increasingly portrays itself as a New Yawk kinda guy who loves nothing better than a good steak, by giving Peter Luger in Brooklyn — which does have a superlative porterhouse — a star, but, c'mon, has anyone ever said anything good about the rest of the food at Luger? And not a single other New York City steakhouse — not Porter House, Smith & Wollensky, Palm, Strip House, all of which have better food on the menu — gets a star? Whazzwiththat?

And then there's the perennial... Italian thing. Not even in all of Italy has Michelin been able to find more than seven three-star restaurants — in Japan, the city of Osaka alone has five! — and New York City, which arguably has some of the finest and most innovative Italian restaurants in the world, has zero with three stars. Only a single Italian place, Marea, gets even two, in the same category as Gordon Ramsay at the London (with which he severed ties two years ago) and Momofuku Ko, where there is indeed no décor, backless stools, and a no-choice menu.

It's further evidence that erosion of standards Michelin once held sacrosanct — little things like flawless service, consistency of menu, and a fine wine list — are now totally ignored. When the two-star Le Bernardin was in Paris, Michelin told its owners they would never get a third star because they only served seafood; the restaurant moved out of Paris and have had three stars in New York City since 2003. Now it seems to matter to Bibendum not at all if a restaurant takes no reservations or has a chef-owner who hasn't strayed into the restaurant in months.

Michelin also used to insist on deleting all stars from a restaurant if the chef changed, even if it had had three stars for twenty years. That criterion means nothing anymore, since restaurants like Aureole (one star) have changed chefs three times in as many years.

It's not worth arguing the omission of so many terrific restaurants from the starred listings — where's ABC Kitchen, Lincoln, DB Bistro Moderne, Maialino, SD26, Babbo, Blue Hill, and so many more far more deserving of a star than Jungsik, Danny Brown Wine Bar & Kitchen, Saul, and Susho of Gari?

So it's no longer easy to judge the judgments of Michelin. Rather than handing down pontifical blessings, they now seem to toss out stars in an effort to be loved, at least by people able to toss around $500 for dinner. But I have to admit, those Bib Gourmand and under-$25 lists are still well worth the $18.99 for the book — way less than the tip you'd have to leave on a thousand-dollar dinner at Michelin's favorites.